Unclaimed million dollar lottery ticket expires Thursday

CLIVE — A large lottery prize is just days away from being unclaimed and going back into the prize pool.

Iowa Lottery spokesperson Mary Neubauer says a Powerball ticket purchased at Casey’s in Nevada on April 11th 2018 worth one million dollars has yet to be claimed. “We have heard from a few people who have called us really worried that they were the winner and that they have lost the ticket or somehow misplaced it,” Neubauer says. “But from any information they shared with us — their details did not match up with what we know about the winning ticket.”

The ticket expires in one year — and the person holding the ticket has to bring it to Lottery Headquarters by this Thursday (April 11th) at 4 p.m.

The Iowa Lottery saw $1.4 million in prizes go unclaimed last year, but those were in smaller amounts that added up, not a six-figure prize. “To the best of our knowledge this has never happened before,” according to Neubauer. “We’ve never had a million-dollar ticket unclaimed in Iowa that is so close to being claimed, or is about to go unclaimed.”

Winners of multi-million dollar jackpots are counseled to make plans before cashing in the prize, and Neubauer says that’s what they first though was happening. “We honestly thought for awhile that maybe the winners were just taking their time to consult a financial planner to make a plan for the money — which is what we want people to do — but it doesn’t seem like they would’ve waited this long to do it. This is obviously just cutting it really, really close,” Neubauer says.

They’ve held a news conference at the store in Nevada and have continued to put the word out there that the clock is ticking. If you think you may’ve bought the ticket, you need to search high and low to find it to collect. “The big part of the equation is you do have to have the winning ticket to claim the prize,” Neubauer says. “That’s part of the reminder that we’ve been putting out there. Please go home, double check your tickets. If you have one still on the sun visor of your car or on the dresser at home — please, please double check them, because we would love to see this money be claimed.”

If the prize is not claimed, the money goes back into the pot and will be used to pay other lottery prizes. If you believe you’ve won an Iowa Lottery prize and have questions before coming forward to claim it, contact the lottery at 515-725-7900 or email [email protected].